Bioneers 2023 Artists and Performers

Jazmin Novak

As an artist, I am drawn to the beauty and complexity of the natural world. This is evident in my work, which reflects the sensitivity and awareness found in the landscape. Through my art, I seek to celebrate the diversity and importance of pollinators that play a vital role in the reproduction of plants and the maintenance of ecosystems. Without pollinators, our food systems would collapse, and the ecosystem would be severely damaged. My work incorporates vibrant colors and intricate patterns inspired by the complex dance of pollinators as they move from flower to flower. With this series, I hope my pieces will encourage viewers to appreciate and protect the pollinators crucial to our environment. By increasing awareness of their beauty and importance, we can work together to guarantee a healthy and vibrant Earth for future generations.

Artist Statement

Jazmin Novak is a Diné sculptor who works in various mediums. She was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but has since relocated to Santa Fe. Having grown up in the southwest, she is influenced by the desert’s environment, this is evident in her work, which reflects the sensitivity and awareness found in this landscape. Novak received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Arts with a minor in Performing Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). Throughout her studies, she focused her art practice on various metal castings using the lost wax process.

Novak has exhibited work in New Mexico in various museums and galleries, including the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, SITE Santa Fe, and 516 Arts, and internationally at the Marist LdM Biennale 2019 Exhibition during the Venice Biennale and the Rainmaker Gallery in England. Novak works as an artist with Meow Wolf while continuing her work as an independent artist.

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Guillermo Flores

Designer, art director and illustrator Guillermo Flores is based in Guadalajara, México and specializes in collage, illustration and digital art. He has collaborated with organizations and companies around the world serving as a creative and art director in multiple projects, developing brand identity, strategy, planning and execution.

Flores has been part of various exhibitions inside and outside of Mexico, one of the most important being the International Collage Art Exhibition in Warsaw, part of the collective exhibition called Surreal Lovers at Retro Avangarda Gallery where he has 12 works on display, referring to the relationship of humans and nature.

Visit Guillermo Flores’ Instagram account here.

Visit Flores’ Behance portfolio here.

Ember de Boer

Ember de Boer creates works centered around ethnic and environmental research with a focus on representation and historical motifs to explore identity through abstract forms and experiments with material. Creating a series of psycho-analytic sculptures that challenge identity through physical and conceptual deconstructionism.

Ember is a part of the exhibition committee for Women’s Eco Artist Dialogue (WEAD) and a resident artist and a board member for Community Shop Class; a learning center and community studio focused on developing community sustainability and resources. Ember utilizes multi-format technology in her studio practice and fabricates by assemblage of organic texture along with painted layers of broken glass to create cerebral geometric forms. Developing her studio practice for the last 9 years; while learning fabrication skills in blue-collar warehouses- she studied and graduated from CSU-Sacramento, Johnson County Community College, and Kansas City Art Institute.

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Kellie Bornhoft   

Another Day evolves out of celebrating the Endangered Species Act, the single most effective environmental legislation in the past 50 years. Though few animals have been delisted, many species avoided extinction because of this protection. This collection of drawn flora and fauna depicts every species ever federally listed under the ESA within a 30-mile radius of my studio. As our climate becomes more unstable and hope dwindles, I want to envision what has been preserved thanks to the hard work of environmentalists who faced similar grim outlooks only half a century ago. Once drawn, I print these animals (and soon also plants) on transparent fabric. Their ghostly presence shows their interconnected dependence. The shadow of the one before allows the next to be seen. The unhemmed fabric leaves them vulnerable to unraveling.

Kellie Bornhoft (she/her) seeks tangible and poetic narratives needed in an ever-warming climate. Bornhoft utilizes sculpture, installation, and video to delve into the whelms and quotidian experiences of our precarious times. Scientific data and news headlines do plenty to evince the state of our warming planet, but the abject realities of such facts are hard to possess. Through geological and more-than-human lenses, Bornhoft sifts through shallow dichotomies (such as natural/unnatural, here/there, or animate/inanimate.) Bornhoft is currently working in the Bay Area of California. She holds a MFA in Sculpture + Expanded Media from Ohio State University and a BFA from Watkins College of Art and Design. Bornhoft’s work has exhibited internationally in museums, galleries and film festivals such as the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, North Carolina, Kulturanker in Magdeburg, Germany, and the Athens International Film and Video Festival. Bornhoft’s work has been reviewed in many publications including Frieze Magazine, Burnaway, INDYweek and ArtsATL. 

Website | Instagram

Nimisha Doongarwal

I am an immigrant from India and moved to the United States in 2007 for higher education in Computer Science. I studied to be a professional Engineer but in 2014, I wanted to learn more about art, so I joined continuing studies at Stanford University. After taking a few courses, I started enjoying it and wanted to learn more, especially art history and art psychology, which is when I enrolled for Masters in Fine Arts . Now, I am a traditionally trained fine artist, but I enjoy breaking the rules and freedom while creating my works. My works are inspired by my surroundings and the idea of finding my own identity as a global citizen. The ultimate goal of my art is to encourage people to embrace cultural diversity and fight for equality for all gender, color, race, religion, etc.

I have been featured in publications and magazine such as Forbes, Maake magazine, Artmarket magazine and has exhibited in museums and galleries including the De Young Museum, San Francisco Airport, San Mateo City Hall, San Mateo Public Library, Museum of Northern California and Brown University. Through my works, I want to encourage people to embrace cultural diversity and fight for equality for all gender, color, race, religion, etc.  I am also one of the board members for San Francisco Women Artists (SFWA), a historic nonprofit arts organization, established in 1887.

Website | Instagram

Tracy Flanagan

Influenced by a large community of botanical artists across the world, Tracy Flanagan dyes and ecoprints cloth and paper using ecologically sustainable local leaves, flowers, and pigments. These techniques transfer brilliant and unexpected plant colors and images to repurposed and redesigned cloth. As a textile artist, writer, and OBG physician, she believes that hand marked fabric and cloth is ‘everyday art’. Throughout her life she has rebirthed cloth with thread, color, and design, as tapestries, garments, and sculptures. 

Generations of hands touch thread and fabric, to create a piece that wraps and heals the body and spirit. Honoring these history laden cloths, she upcycles discarded fabrics for rebirth and reuse telling a new story of connection between place, fiber, and person  Using natural products extracted from the earth and plants, she breathes new life into these designed textiles, transforming them into articles to be touched, worn, or gazed upon by their owners. This manipulation of cloth mirrors the work of life– to honor what has come before yet continuously question and reinvent ourselves anew.

“my body, my privacy” questions whether reproductive freedom for women is on the “clearance” rack. It depicts the consequences of removing abortion as a option for pregnant women.

Website | Instagram

Tanya Knoop

Born in Mallorca and raised in San Francisco, Tanya Knoop is a third-generation photographer and has been taking and developing pictures for decades. Her photographic work extends from still life, portraiture and fine-art nudes to landscape and true representation of artwork. Her current passion is creating provocative climate-change related work.

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Zac Morrison

Zac Morrison is a 5th generation Californian born in the Haight Ashbury district to one of the original hippies. He learned from his mother, dancer and ethnologist Miriam Morrison, that the arts are the quintessential human expression. As a youth, he traveled with her to Taipei, Taiwan; Tokyo- Kyoto- Osaka, Japan and experienced the numerous artforms she studied there. He lived in London and in Java, Indonesia, where he immersed himself into Javanese language and culture, especially the gamelan. These experiences continue to influence Zac’s work as he composes music and photographs. He takes every opportunity he can to attend weekly music and dance concerts and recitals.

Website | Instagram

Amanda Rose Hopkins (A. Rose)

My early years were spent in rural Mendocino and Sonoma Counties. While she was pregnant and living in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, as an offering my mother planted 3,000 roses, inspiring the name Amanda Rose. Living in this three dimensional mandala where colorful Tibetan banners blew in the wind and the light glinted off the gold leafed stupa, cultivated a love of beauty and an openness to unseen realms.

In college, at UC Santa Cruz, I studied fine art and formed special kinships with painter Melissa Gwynn and performance artist Elizabeth Stephens. Gwynn taught me the beauty of experimentation and obsession in art. Stephens invited me to exhibit with her and Annie Sprinkle in their Eco-Sexual Symposium, where we committed to being lovers to the earth.  

During my senior year and after graduation I fell in love with the work of Helen and Newton Harrison, amazingly they were local professors and artists and needed an artists assistant.  The mother and father of the environmental art movement were writing a retrospective of their work which I helped to transcribe. In the fall of 2013 I received the opportunity to travel to Sarnath, India and assist in painting a mural inside the main hall of the Institute under artists Kaveri and TJ Singh as well as assisting with installing three dimensional epoxy resin cast and gold leafed Tibetan script across the outer walls of the Sarnath International Nyingma Institute. 

In the past few years I found my tribe in Sonoma County and the North Bay Area while exhibiting at the 2019 and 2022 and 2022 Bioneers Conferences and participating in exhibits at the Healdsburg Center for the Arts, the Petaluma Arts Center and the Santa Rosa Art Center.

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Monique Sonoquie

As a Basketweaver, Monique Sonoquie (Tongva, Chumash, Yaqui, Zapotec, Irish) gathers and weaves traditional materials such as tule, Juncus, Hazel and Willow sticks, and more recently with Kelp/Seaweeds.  With limited access to gathering sites and materials, due to toxins, land loss and climate change, she has started using alternative materials to preserve and education others about culture and land.  Her new found challenge is weaving with recycled materials, combining her passions of Traditional weaving and her dedication for “Refuse, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.” During her fellowship to the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, Monique explored and expanded on representing Traditional lifestyles by reclaiming post industrial waste, and evolving from her electronic cable baskets, to life size sculptures, which include a life size hut and human forms. She will be repurposing her Pre-Colonial Post-Industrial Village Site at this years Bioneers Conference.

Los Subterráneos

Los Subterráneos is an art collective based in Oaxaca, Mexico. This collective formed in August 2021 developing a proposal so that young artists could have access to knowledge and tools that allow them to thrive and through this be agents of change to transform their society. At the same time, the collective seeks to make visible issues of social content to sensitise the public through art and the intervention of public space.

Casa Subterránea was created as a school, studio space, and gallery, which offers drawing, engraving and mural painting workshops to anyone who wishes to explore these subjects. We are especially open to all young people who need such a place to develop their creative, spiritual and aesthetic potential. For Subterráneos, art is and will be a space through which we connect as both artists and spectators. Casa Subterránea aims to provide a living that can cover the basic needs of our members.

The body of work presented at this year’s Bioneers conference 2023 is called Los Nadies or The Nobodies. Collective’s statement: “We look to the past to resuscitate images of those who have arrived in the present almost wrapped in oblivion. We resignify them to remove the nobodies from the nothingness, in which everyone who does not share the logic of this is buried- the system that segregates, kills and forgets even the hands, voices and bodies that gave the world shape.”

This exhibition is curated by Patsy Craig, director and founder of AWA, a cultural project based in Cusco, Peru focusing on art at the intersection of ecology, Indigeneity, ancestral knowledge, and decolonisation.

Minoosh Zomorodinia

Minoosh Zomorodinia is an Iranian-born interdisciplinary artist who makes visible the emotional and psychological reflections of her mind’s eye inspired by nature and her environment. She employs walking as a catalyst to reference the power of technology as a colonial structure while negotiating boundaries of land. Her strollings sometimes reimagines our relationships between nature, land, and technology, while addressing transformation of memories into actual physical space absurdly. Zomorodinia has received several awards, residences, and grants including the Kala Media Fellowship Award, Headlands Center for the Arts, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency, Djerassi Residency, Recology Artist Residency, the Alternative Exposure Award, and California Art Council Grants. She has exhibited locally and internationally at Asian Art Museum San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco Arts Commission, Berkeley Art Center, Pori Art Museum, Nevada Museum of Art, ProARTS and many more. Her work has been featured in the SF Chronicle, Hyperallergic, SFWeekly, KQED and many other media outlets. She earned her MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute, and holds a Masters degree in Graphic Design and BA in Photography from Azad University in Tehran. She currently lives and works in the Bay Area.

Title of work: Silver Town Society

Anima & Animus, from the Silver Town Society series, is an installation assembled from discarded materials found at the dump during the Recology Artist Residency in San Francisco. This installation references consumerism and spotlights infrastructural materials that are often invisible to us. These sculptures reimagine creatures that are the result of neglectful daily consumption and speak to the collective unconscious. Underlying their absurdity, these creatures speak to renewal and hope inspired by mythological tales, like Noah’s Ark.

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Susan Felter

Susan grew up in Oakland, earning a BA in Psychology and Art from UC Berkeley, and an MFA in Motion Pictures from UCLA. In 1980, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography. Her work has been exhibited and published in the U.S. and abroad. She taught Photography at Santa Clara University 1983 to 2010. 

This photo montagetriptych is a “creative non-fiction” image of my home town, Oakland. I wanted to acknowledge and enjoy the mingling of our everyday cultural lives with nature. This work was originally created for the Oakland Museum of California’s 2015 exhibit “Who is Oakland” organized by Bay Aea artist and educator Chris Johnson.

Website

Analog Equilibrium

Analog Equilibrium (aka Tom Steele, PhD) is an Artist, Arts Advocate and long-time resident of San Francisco. 

His creative adventures over the years have primarily involved light-based assemblages/installations.  Since having become an annual “serial-Burner” starting in 2002, his work has been highly influenced by the ethos of the Burning Man community.  Besides individual smaller-scale works developed in SF over the years, he created the HeART Mobile – a mutant vehicle for the Blackrock Desert environment in 2005 & 2006, as well as he co-led an Art installation “Galactica Metamorphica” (celebrating women in science and specifically their progress in elucidating black holes) in 2019.  He has also collaborated on other collective Art installations including “The Family Jewels Project”/”Luster Cluster” over a few years, and contributed to the huge project “The Folly” in 2019.  

His creative endeavors have always emphasized reuse and repurposing of available excess materials and supplies, especially those items which others often just discard as no longer useful.  This is based foremost on an innate concern regarding humankind’s environmental insensitivities and excesses, as well as due to financial constraints in making larger art installations, together with enjoying rising to the challenges of having to work with whatever  materials are available – which can actually further stimulate the creative process.  When all-too-often others think “this just should be thrown out”, that motivates him to ponder – how can this be given a new life, either utilitarian and/or artistic?  (“You see Junk – and I see Resource!”)  His work has included repurposing vintage photography, projection & audio equipment, lighting sources such as linear fluorescent bulbs, truck indicator lights, and vintage slide projector bulbs, as well as incorporating wire left over from older appliances & construction projects, together with using structural metal from discarded Ikea furniture, and “walkers” & crutches .  His favorite materials include anything that jointly involves glass+metal+light, plus aluminum & copper, glass & acrylic, silk, leather, felt & fabric scraps and used T-shirts, left-over nailpolish and lately excess books from SF Public Libraries destined to be mulched – that he has been repurposing via laser-cutting. 

With an educational background in Experimental High-Energy Physics and Applied Mathematics, and an extended commercial career in the Lasers/Photonics arena (from which he took early retirement in mid-2017), a close friend has recently termed him a “Tech Refugee” who is largely focussed on community-based local non-profit efforts in the reuse/sustainability area.  He is presently Operations Director at Friends of SCRAP (nonprofit based in SF Bayview focused on creative reuse), as well as Executive Director/Board Member of Bio-Link Depot (nonprofit centered in Oakland which receives donated equipment and supplies that are given out to STEM educators at non-charge).  He was formerly a Board Member of PAWS (Pets Are Wonderful Support) and The Shanti Project, as well as presently being on leave as a Board Member of SCRAP.  He is also Treasurer of Flagging In The Park (local grass-roots community-building group), and is a volunteer staff member with The Burning Man Project – dually as Shift Lead at the ARTery (on-playa Art Dept) and as Art Liaison Lead on the local Community Events Team.   Yes he is indeed very busy – and never, ever bored! 

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Rikki List

Rikki List is a visual artist from Vienna who currently resides in the Bay Area, California. In 2018 Rikki started THE MANIMAL PROJECT, creating hybrid creatures part animal part human. It started as a response to humans distancing themselves from nature; reconsidering humans as animals, as part of nature. The Manimal sculptures have been displayed as urban art installations as well as site specific installations, provoking in the viewer a combination of attraction and revulsion; similar to the relationship between humans and animals. Recent installations have focused on sensitive topics regarding farmed animals. They provoked the viewer to think about how most societies view farm animals as products and “lower” species than other animals. That perspective makes it easier for people to justify cruelty against them and killing them. The Manimal installations challenge the viewer to question the common perspective.

Website | Instagram

Salma Arastu

As a woman, artist, and mother, I work to create harmony by expressing the universality of humanity through paintings, sculpture, and calligraphy. At birth I was given the life-defining challenge of a left hand without fingers. After graduating in Fine Arts from Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, India, I lived and worked in Iran and Kuwait before landing at Pennsylvania USA in 1986.

As a visual artist I have had 40 plus solo shows nationally and internationally and have won several prestigious awards including the East Bay Community’s Fund for Artists in 2012 and 2014 and 2020. The City of Berkeley’s Individual Artist Grant Award in 2014, 2015, and 2016. I have public art pieces on display in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and San Diego, California and I have also written and published five books on my art and poetry including my recent with ecological consciousness from Quranic verses “Our Earth: Embracing All Communities.”

My works are lyrical, spiritual, figurative, and calligraphic. My paintings reveal stories of unity in diversity, hope and connection, celebration of earth and women. I like to work in series and these series are evolved from each other. My new works Series are bridging Science and Faith creating a visual discourse that bridges science, religion, Islamic diversity and diaspora, language engaged with the plight of humanity, the soul, and the soil.

I have immersed myself in research to gain a deeper knowledge of science and faith to find remedies to save our planet and its ecosystems. My research led me to discover Mycelia- the vegetative part of a fungus, consisting of a network of fine white filaments. Through my explorations in these life-giving networks under our feet, creating visual images of these connections and collaborations satisfies my soul. I hope to bring humanity together with lessons learned from nature. The Tiny Creatures series visualizes microbes as integral to our ecosystem. These tiny creatures, microbes, are sustainers in the ecosystem. I feel Intrigued and inspired by their story and have created a body of work to draw attention to them. I use thin acrylic glazes and pen & ink drawing to create a visual language for the intricate relationship between creatures swarming on my canvases in chaos-like compositions. These works are imaginative and spontaneous and bring energy and hope.

David Solnit

David Solnit is a climate justice, global justice, anti-war, arts, and direct action organizer, an author, a puppeteer, and a trainer. He was a key organizer in the shutdowns of the WTO in Seattle in 1999 and in San Francisco the day after Iraq was invaded in 2003.

He is an arts organizer, puppeteer and a co-founder of Art and Revolution, using culture, art, giant puppets and theater in mass mobilizations, for popular education and as an organizing tool. He has co-created visuals for the campaigns of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, National Peoples Action and numerous mobilizations and actions. David is a direct action, strategy and cultural resistance trainer who currently works with Courage to Resist, supporting GI resistance to war and empire.

Instagram

Jason Fann

Jayson Fann is an Interdisciplinary artist, musician, educator and producer. His work is centered in the creation of interactive arts and cultural collaborations that foster connection with nature, intercultural literacy, dialogue and awareness.

His residencies provide organizations and communities with the opportunity to advance meaningful partnerships that promote ecological stewardship through arts and cultural initiatives.

His work celebrates the diversity found in nature, communities, and individual perspectives while exploring ideas around identity, perceptions, listening and advocacy.

 Jayson has become well known for his architectural sculptures called Spirit Nests.The large scale installations serve as set designs for his musical and story telling productions that honor and explore our collective past present and future.

The Nests provide a community space for healing, reflection and story telling woven with the rhythms and language of nature.

Website

WEAD: Women Eco Artists Dialog

WEAD is a pioneering international network of feminist eco­artists, educators, curators, and writers working toward the goal of a just and healthy world with an Artists Directory of over 400 artists. We focus on women’s unique perspective in ecological and social justice art. WEAD maintains a website (weadartists.org) that serves as a virtual gallery of eco­artists work, connects artists and curators with exhibition opportunities, and educates and enlightens through our on-line WEAD Magazine.

WEAD runs as a female identified volunteer collective. We organize monthly on-line presentations on Art + Activism, Art + Education and Art + Science, sponsor both virtual and physical exhibitions, and publish a yearly digital Magazine. Our mission is to encourage, support and mentor artists to create eco art events and initiatives, in their own neighborhoods, in regional collaborations and internationally. 

Website | Instagram

EcoArt Matters

EcoArt Matters is an Interdisciplinary Environmental and Social Justice class at Laney College, Oakland, initiated by Andrée Singer Thompson in 2005, and currently co-taught by Minoosh Zomorodina and Sharon Siskin. Students in the class engage in art-based research projects, learn to write project proposals and make and exhibit art/poetry/music/performance/video addressing the urgent issues of our time. We have visits from Indigenous, social and environmental justice artists and activists from organizations including Recology Artist in Residence Program, Common Vision, Growing Together, Planting Justice, Sogorea Té Land Trust, San Quentin Prison Arts Project and more. The students in this class have participated in past Bioneers conferences by helping to install EcoArt Exhibitions and help educate participants about the creative ways to give voice to these urgent issues.

At a time when the planet and social issues are in need of our most creative attention, this course helps educate, advocate, and create hope for a healthy survival.

The students in this class have participated in past Bioneers conferences by helping to install EcoArt Exhibitions and educating  participants about the creative ways to give voice to important ecological and social justice issues.

ART/ACT: YOUTH
with North Platte High School
& University of Nebraska, Lincoln

 On view: March 10 – June 8, 2023
Opening Reception: Fri, March 10, 6-8pm

What happens when impassioned high school teachers from polar ends of the United States combine to inspire the next generation of environmental artivists?

When North Platte (Lincoln, NE) and Skyline High (Oakland, CA) teachers met in May 2022, sparks flew. What their students created after learning about each region’s unique ecology and groundwater challenges will leave you breathless.

Since 2017, the Art/Act: Educate program empowers educators and students to work across disciplines, learning creatively and collaboratively to inspire the next visionary solutions to address our changing future.

Performance by Jason Nious/Molodi

Thursday, April 6th at 11:26 am

Jason Nious, a performing artist and creative director whose background with high school step teams and NCAA gymnastics launched his career, has traveled extensively with Cirque du Soleil, Usher, Stomp, Step Afrika, and numerous theatre and film productions. As founder and Director of the Las Vegas, NV-based, award-winning body percussion ensemble, Molodi, Jason designs new touring productions and facilitates Molodi’s arts education program, reaching over 20,000 students per year. He also serves as an arts integration consultant with Focus 5, Cirque du Soleil, Cleveland Playhouse, and The Smith Center; and is an Artist-In-Residence with the Museum of Dance, Education Chair of the LAB LV Theatre Company, and regularly conducts in-school residencies through the Nevada Arts Council.

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Performance by Rising Appalachia

Friday, April 7th at 10:52 am

Rising Appalachia, an internationally touring Appalachian and world folk ensemble founded by Atlanta-raised, New Orleans-based sisters Leah and Chloe Smith whose soulful folk-roots sound traces back to their open-minded musician parents and to grassroots music communities in the hills and valleys of the Deep South as well as urban Atlanta, has consistently used its platform to activate, organize and support frontline justice work and community organizations. Fifteen years into an adventure that has taken this self-made, stubbornly independent band around the globe, they have recently released a new master-work, their seventh album, Leylines, recorded in California in a studio overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

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Destiny Arts Performance

Saturday, April 8th at 11:11 am

The Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company (DAYPC) is a diverse group of teens that collaborates with professional artists to create dynamic, original productions. Combining hip hop, modern and aerial dance, theater, song, and rap, company members take the stage to tell stories that stem from their lived experiences and express their visions for a world transformed. Since 1993, DAYPC has performed original work for up to 25,000 audience members annually, garnering critical acclaim and widespread community support for both their technical prowess and their commitment to advancing inclusivity, equity, and justice.

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